Since entering the spring high season of new products, a variety of new flagships, sub-flagships have been released in succession to dazzling. In particular, a large number of Snapdragon 8 and Tianji 9000 models have been released, and many people may now be planning to start upgrading the old machines on their hands.
What I'm saying is, are you going to wait?
Because according to the latest news in the industry chain, Qualcomm is expected to launch an enhanced version of the Snapdragon 8 processor in the second half of the year. The new product will be handed over to TSMC for OEM and is expected to bring higher yields and better power performance.
According to Qualcomm's naming rules, Qualcomm's commercial flagship chips in the second half of this year will be named Snapdragon 8 Gen1 Plus, and more news said that including next year's flagship processor Snapdragon 8 Gen2, they will be foundry by TSMC.
Prior to this, Qualcomm Snapdragon 888 and Snapdragon 8 Gen1 were OEM by Samsung.
As we all know, since last year's Snapdragon 888 platform, Qualcomm's flagship processor has been plagued by power consumption problems. Including this year's Snapdragon 8 mobile platform, power consumption and heat generation have always been the most concerned issues for consumers. This has also allowed flagship mobile phones in the past two years to start stacking materials in terms of heat dissipation to solve the problem of heat generation of mobile phones under high load conditions.
To a large extent, behind this is actually the pot of its Samsung 4nm process. According to industry sources, the yield of snapdragon 4nm process chips produced by Samsung is only 35%. And Samsung's self-developed 4nm process SoC Orion 2200 has a lower yield. This means that nearly 70% of the chips produced by Samsung are waste chips, which not only makes the cost of chips high. Flaws in its process have also led to problems in power consumption and performance of Snapdragon's chips.
Recently, it was reported that Samsung Electronics' DS department is undergoing an inspection by the management department on whether the yield report of the 5nm chip process is true. In the next step, the management department will also check the chip yield report of the 4nm and 3nm process processes. The investigation was launched because Samsung Electronics suspected fraud in previous reports on the production and yield of Samsung Semiconductor FOUNDRies.
At present, it is almost certain that Qualcomm, the largest customer of Samsung Semiconductor's foundry services, expects that the SoC foundry order for the upcoming 3nm process will be completed exclusively by TSMC next year. Earlier, Samsung had already lost the competition with TSMC, losing orders for NVIDIA's 7nm process GPU.
At present, if Qualcomm hands over the Snapdragon 8 Plus to TSMC for OEM in the second half of the year. With TSMC's good reputation at the 4nm process level, this will be expected to alleviate the power consumption problem of the current Snapdragon 8 mobile platform to a certain extent. From the product level, at present, large customers including Xiaomi, Vivo and other major customers are expected to launch their own super cup flagship products in the second half of the year.
For example, the legendary Xiaomi Super Cup flagship Xiaomi 12 Ultra, vivo X80 Pro+, etc., from the perspective of time release cycle, are expected to use the Snapdragon 8 Plus oem of TSMC.
From the experience point of view, although this year's MediaTek Tianji 9000 series products are menacing in the performance level, it has the meaning of taking the Snapdragon 8 and replacing it. But in fact, Snapdragon 8 still has years of accumulated strength in terms of imagery and connectivity. Especially in terms of image performance, there is still a big gap between the Tianji series models and the Snapdragon flagship.
After solving the power consumption and heat problems, the Snapdragon 8 Plus released in the second half of the year will regain its home field advantage. And with its performance in terms of imaging, it continues to sit firmly on the throne of the boss of its Own Android flagship platform. For consumers, at the latest in the second half of the year, you can buy the Snapdragon 8 Plus flagship that has more stable performance and is not hot at the same time.
Again, the party will eventually win a big victory.